Jamin Bradley

So you’re waiting for the end to come and you need a guide! Fortunately for you, there are a few thousand crazy people to choose from, because people have been saying that this is the end since the first century of the church. To some extent, they’re all correct, because the end-times are the period after Jesus’ resurrection. But when it comes to guessing Jesus’ return date, so far 100% have been wrong.

A hundred percent. That’s a staggering statistic of failure, but it hasn’t seemed to phase anyone. Christians are still happy to latch onto every end-times “prophet” they hear. They base all their decisions around their false words as they give into chaos and anxiety. For example, when Harold Camping said the end of the world would happen on May 21, 2011,

People sold their homes, pulled their children out of school, and liquidated all their assets to support the end-of-the-world evangelization effort … disturbed listeners attempted—and sometimes succeeded at—committing suicide. A Taiwanese man launched himself from a building to avoid the imminent cosmic upheavals; a California mother attacked her young daughters with box cutters before opening her own throat in terror of the tribulation … And the sun came up on May 22, 2011.

Christopher M. Hays, When the Son of Man Didn’t Come (2)

If Jesus’ best guess of his return timeframe was wrong, then maybe we should stop listening to the not-Jesuses around us when it comes to this topic. It will happen when it will happen, and even Jesus acknowledged that only God actually knows when that is. Likewise, the rest of the Bible talks about his return as a surprise that will pounce on you when you’re not expecting it. And you can’t use the Book of Revelation to try to get all the answers because John wasn’t writing to you. While a dark time is still ahead of us before the new creation breaks through, many of the events he mentioned are in the past. Revelation was more concretely prophetic to the early church and is more abstractly prophetic for us today.

So you’re waiting for the end to come and you need a guide! If you’re looking to me for an answer, then there are at least two essential topics that God is weighing out to determine when it’s time to send Jesus back: salvation and justice. As for salvation, because he’s a loving God, he doesn’t want to return until there’s no one left who will receive the gospel. As for justice, because he’s a loving God, the only reason he may opt to return sooner is if he can’t bear the weight of how many of his beloved children have been martyred. I’d suggest that these topics will likely coincide at the same moment—and looking around at the world today, I’d also suggest that we’ve got a few thousand years left to go before that happens.